FACING DOWN A DESPOT

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Even massive air strikes might not achieve Clinton's objective. Biological weapons are so small and concealable that no air campaign could be sure of getting rid of them, even if the Pentagon knew what Saddam was hiding and where. (It does not.) Bombing Saddam into submission is no sure thing either, because the Iraqi President, who builds palaces while his people starve, seems willing to let his country hunker down and absorb almost limitless punishment. Such an attack would involve bomber squadrons as well as missiles, endangering American lives. It would also convulse the Arab world, which fears a destabilized Iraq--"Beirut with ballistic missiles," as a Gulf Defense Minister describes it--as much as it fears Saddam. The region is already roiled by the U.S. failure to push Israel into meaningful peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Those looking for a symbol of the fractious, anti-American climate that has emboldened Saddam need look no further than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's lonely visit to the Middle Eastern economic summit held last weekend in Doha, Qatar. Despite U.S. pressure on Arab states to attend, America's closest Arab allies--Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco--all refused to show up. So embittered was the atmosphere that in the end Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy declined to attend.

These overseas tests and humiliations are coming at a time when Clinton has been cast as a lame duck at home--spurned by his party, insulted by his opponents, dogged by scandal every day. He has never seemed so alone. All in a rush last week, the President was thwarted by congressional Democrats, who rejected his full-court press for "fast track" authority to negotiate trade deals, and embarrassed by Republicans, who refused to pay America's $926 million debt to the U.N.--at the precise moment Clinton was trying to put together a U.N.-backed coalition against Saddam. The G.O.P. also blocked $3.5 billion for the International Monetary Fund, which is trying to bolster quaking economies in Asia. If they collapse, the wreckage could puncture the American prosperity for which Clinton claims credit. On Capitol Hill "there are no die-hard Clinton people anymore," complains an Administration aide. "For each issue, the President has to build a different coalition from the ground up."

Though Congress will rally behind him should he unleash the military, many of the allies he wants beside him aren't likely to, because he neglected the Gulf War coalition he inherited from George Bush. "We knew the coalition was slipping away, but we kept saying, 'We can manage it,'" says a leading Iraq expert inside the government. "There was complacency. And there's not much excuse for not having a strategy to deal with what's happened because we've been talking about it for years."